Empowering Adolescent Girls

  • F Funding Initiative/Portfolio

? Activity Status: Unknown

Key Information

The government of Rwanda set out a bold and ambitious agenda to achieve middle-income status by the year 2020. However, at most levels of society, women remain distinctly vulnerable due to a variety of factors, including low literacy rates, low secondary school completion rate, high rates of domestic violence, and lower earnings and economic opportunities than men. The sharp differentiation in treatment, expectations, opportunities, and access to resources for adolescent girls during childhood and adolescence shapes their life trajectories in numerous ways. Just as adolescent boys are given more freedom and opportunity, the lives of adolescent girls become more constrained and confined in terms of opportunity, resources, mobility, and life choices. As a result, adolescent girls are stuck in a cycle that reinforces a life of poverty, stress, and limitation. This is particularly so in the northern and western districts of Rwanda, where Firelight’s CBO grantee-partners were located. Communities in this region have been impacted not only by the genocide, HIV, and acute poverty, but also by instability at the borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. Our aim with this grantee cluster has been to build the capacity these local community-based organizations to run and document effective, replicable, and potentially scalable holistic girls’ empowerment programs that will support vulnerable young women and shift their economic, educational, and social outcomes in the long-term. Of the six grantee-partners we also supported Action pour le Développement du Peuple (ADEPE) to be a Community Grantmaker to the other five, building their capacity to support the other smaller. We have been working with ADEPE to focus on strengthening the capacity of the smaller CBOs in girl-centered programming and in organizational development areas such as financial management and monitoring and evaluation.


Lead Implementing Organization(s)

Location(s)

Sub-Saharan Africa

Rwanda

Government Affiliation

Non-governmental program

Years

Not applicable or unknown

Partner(s)

Not applicable or unknown

Ministry Affiliation

Unknown

Funder(s)

Not applicable or unknown

COVID-19 Response

Unknown

Geographic Scope

National

Meets gender-transformative education criteria from the TES  

Unknown

Areas of Work Back to Top

Education areas

Attainment

  • Secondary completion

Other

  • Other

Other skills

  • Vocational training

Cross-cutting areas

  • Adolescent pregnancy/childbearing
  • Economic/livelihoods (including savings/financial inclusion, etc.)
  • Empowerment
  • Food/water security
  • Gender equality
  • Other aspects of sexual and reproductive health

Program participants

Target Audience(s)

Girls (both in school and out of school), Youth

Age

Not applicable or unknown

School Enrolment Status

Some in school

School Level

  • Lower secondary
  • Upper secondary

Other populations reached

Not applicable or unknown

Participants include

Not applicable or unknown

Program Approaches Back to Top

Health and childcare services

  • Adolescent-friendly health services

Learning while working

  • Vocational training

Reducing economic barriers

  • Vouchers/grants

Women's empowerment programs

  • Empowerment training

Program Goals Back to Top

Education goals

  • Increased secondary school completion

Cross-cutting goals

  • Increased agency and empowerment